Something I Expected to be Different

Something I Expected to be DifferentBy Joshua Beckman Description Reviews Did you see my eyes darting. Did you hear me repeating, yes every word you said. Of Beckmans second collection, Toma alamun writes: There are no similarities with Apollinaire or Ginsberg, except with what they were doing to Time while they were young. Through repetition, rhythm, and a pervasively taut but accessible voice, Beckman sweeps us through his poems. On the way, we cover a lot of ground: the cost of

with its bawdy metaphors and extensive use of vernacular imagery

which is deliver new ways of talking and looking and thinking

words hold the dazzling potential that we can rise through language to "come up clutching what is under— / come back striking / what’s above

dear tongue my Queen dear rock solid

limiting materiality

to “learn how/ to live so/ wilderness/ never/ becomes/ mythology

Joe Wenderoth performs the kind of madness that is no performance

alchemical humility

and restless innovation—and he does indeed sing again

Eric Dean Wilson

Kristin Abraham

She does this while simultaneously working to resituate poetry--or to place it firmly in an arena it is not often placed--in the realm of the purchased and the loosely domestic